The Age of Accidents
by Fancy-Hart
Summary: Written for Y5 House Competition. Prompt:There was something odd about the young boy/girl who lived in the last house on the street


Team: Eagles

Class: Potions,

Story: Drabble

Prompt:There was something odd about the young boy/girl who lived in the last house on the street.

Word Count: 1066

There was something odd about the young boy who lived in the last house on the street. Truthfully there was something odd about the whole family. Two whales that masqueraded as human men, a beanpole with the facial features of a horse, and a living scarecrow with a mop of hair so untidy, their neighbor wondered if he even owned a brush.

Marjorie knew their names, she knew the names of everyone in this street - and all their comings and goings. She had to keep an eye on things, no one else would. No one knew the things she knew. No one understood the tricks and ploys of the government better than her. Sure, they laughed it off and called her crazy, but she was aware, she knew. And she would show them all.

It started eight years ago when the scarecrow - Harry he was called - had been dropped off on the doorstep. She'd been doing her nightly watch from her bedroom window when suddenly a street lamp had gone dim. Just one. Now, she knew enough about the government and their tricks. She owned a map of the electric boards for all of England and half of Wales - there was no reason for this one lamp to extinguish. She grabbed the binoculars from the window ledge, the ones that allowed her to record through their lenses. She zoomed in on the ground just beneath the unlit lamp. No glass, no shiny, glistening specks of see-through material that would suggest the bulb had broken. No, whatever had made that lamp lose its luster was not electronic. If it had been a fault in the circuit, the whole street would have fallen black. Something was off - something was happening on this otherwise completely normal street, she waited for over 30 minutes and nothing seemed to happen, no otherworldly beings appeared in a U.F.O, no ghostly apparitions haunted the street. She closed her curtains and retired to bed. And the next morning, when she had heard the scream of the wretched woman, she knew that it had something to do with _that baby_. And she was going to figure out the mystery of this new child.

The first few years, try as she might, she could find nothing unusual about him, as the child was kept indoors - and besides, how unusual could a baby be? She _did_ notice that the arrival of the doorstep baby, brought with it a cat that seemed to favor the Dursley's back garden, staring through the windows as though attempting to watch what was happening. But it was a cat - hardly worth paying attention to.

When the child was three, he had been out in the garden keeping himself quietly amused. She had spied him through her net curtains, watching as the child crowed in delight having found something on the grass before him; she reached for her binoculars. It was a green garden snake that wound its way around a fearless and baby fat ridden arm, sliding its way up the toddler's chest and around his neck. She could not hear what he was saying, but it seemed the boy was attempting to talk to the snake, was hissing at it. Even stranger was that it seemed as if the snake understood and was responding. Between the snake and the cat,

When the boy started school, odd rumors began to circulate. He managed to turn his teacher's wig blue, despite not touching it at all and even made his way to the roof of the school building - despite locked doors that should have prevented his access. It was obviously the work of the devil, and Marjorie - a good Christian woman- felt it was her duty to ensure that the boy would not be able to cause harm to any other children in the neighborhood. She dared not speak to anyone in the family, lest the devil worshippers set their sights on her.

It was an evening in March and she had just finished her kippers for tea. She read her journals again and realised that very little had happened at Number 4 since the rumours about the boy had started to circulate. It was as though the Dursleys had decided to keep him as far away from prying eyes as possible. Marjorie glanced through the net curtains again as she washed her dishes. She spied a tortoiseshell cat. The same cat she had seen every few months since the child had been placed on her neighbors doorstep. She felt something was odd about the feline, but could not quite put her finger on it. It seemed almost as though it was aware it was being watched. A loud crash from inside the Dursleys house made Marjorie jump, and the cat - in a very unfeline way; moved closer to the window. Marjorie grabbed her binoculars and proceeded to her front door. She was going to find out what was up with that cat? She softly shut the front door behind her and proceeded quietly down her garden path, not once allowing the cat out of her sight.

Minerva had heard the crash, no one could have missed it. But her heightened feline hearing meant she heard a small cry follow just after. Unfortunately, the height of the wall meant she could not see into the upstairs bedroom. She glanced around quickly and saw no one, before allowing her arms and legs to stretch uncomfortably, and her human spine crack as she changed her form. Just as she was about to inhale her first breath as a human, she heard a scream and jumped down from the wall in the hopes that no one in Number 4 would see her, searching for the noise. She saw the body in the garden across the street. Albus was going to kill her. Obliviate it was then.

There was something odd about the young boy who lived in the last house on the street. Truthfully there was something odd about the whole family. She hadn't seen much of the young child since the rumours about what he had done in school surfaced. She began to dry the dish she had eaten her kippers on earlier before grabbing her binoculars and taking her favourite seat in front of the net curtains. Something was strange about that boy, she just could not put her finger on it.


End file.
